"Moore's law" for lasers?

A lot of you have probably heard of Moore's law: the observation that computing power per unit price doubles approximately every 18 to 24 months. This has been extended to other technologies, such as data storage capacities and digital camera resolutions.

Is there a similar "law" for lasers?

There's no questions that lasers have improved over the last few years. For example, back in 2006, violet lasers topped at just a few mW and cost several hundred dollars. Nowadays, we can build class IV Blu-Ray lasers for the same price. Also, green lasers above 300 mW were very rare at that time; today, it's not uncommon to see 800 mW handhelds.

Well, I don't know if there is a Moore's law for lasers, but it makes sense that if this 'Law' has been extended to other technologies, it will include lasers as well, and your examples prove it.

Therefore, I think that the 'Law' is valid, and you can expect a drop of prices next year, or more powerfull lasers at the same prices as today, exactly as it is in computers.

I'm not really sure it's valid for us.. The primary hindrance to comparison to other technologies is that hobbyist lasers isn't really an 'industry' with 'R&D' in any real sense.

The laser diodes we use are developed for entirely different technologies. So their advancement for our purposes hinges entirely on their advancement being needed for the other technologies that use them.

The consumer devices that we get lasers from could very well run in to non-laser related limitations before the limits of the construction of the laser diodes themselves is reached. For instance.. display devices only need to be so bright.. optical media burners will eventually get to the limits of safe spindle speeds for the media, etc..

Us having 'cheap' laser diodes depends on other mass produced technologies utilizing them.